During more than three years of publication, BC has
gathered around it a truly talented band of writers, who are kind
enough to contribute their brilliance to our humble publication.
These ladies and gentlemen have allowed us to fulfill our mission:
to define and refine progressive thought in the United States.
Not all of them are Black. We at BC believe
that African Americans – and our non-Black allies – deserve the best
insights and knowledge that is available, and that the authors’ race
is secondary to their contribution to our understanding of the
world.

We have not included all of our esteemed colleagues in the following
review, because they have become so numerous. To those who have
been left out of this yearly review, we apologize. Blame it on
the heat, and the failings of the Publishers, Glen Ford and Peter
Gamble.

Patrice D. Johnson, one of our original contributors,
warned that the bogus “war on terror” had targeted non-profit
organizations that, in the warped minds of the Bush people, might
have connections
to individuals on an enemies list. The list is arbitrary and capricious,
but might embroil innocent givers and charities in the national
security network, as Ms. Johnson wrote in her September
2, 2004 article, “Charity and Homeland Security.”

”OMB Watch, a Washington-based non-profit that
monitors the activities of the White House Office of Management
and Budget, issued a statement calling on the CFC to ‘change
its misguided policy.’ The group, a participant in the federal
fundraising drive and a member of the dissenting coalition of
non-profits, says in its statement that following Patermaster’s
directive would ‘force America’s charities to act as police investigators
and enforcers... Nonprofits may become reluctant – even if unconsciously – to
hire minorities, especially those who appear to be Islamic or
of Middle-Eastern descent, or whose names sound like people who
might be on the blacklist.’”

The crime against democracy committed by the United States in
Haiti in the winter of 2004 continues to bleed the country, with
the complicity of a cowed United Nations. Perhaps the most courageous
reporter on the scene in the capital, Port-au-Prince, is Kevin
Pina, BC’s Associate Editor. Mr. Pina braves
the bullets of U.S.-sponsored goons every day to report on the
rape of the New World’s first non-racial republic, now reduced
to a colony of the U.S., France, and Canada. On September
16, 2004, six months after the United States kidnapped and
exiled the elected President of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide,
head of the Lavalas Party, Kevin Pina set the record straight
in our pages. The massed corporate media had distorted history
to mask an orgy of criminality, wrote Pina, in an article titled “One
Man’s Democracy is Another Man’s Chains: The Untold Story of
Aristide’s Departure from Haiti”:

”The Lavalas party’s land reform for the peasants
and universal literacy programs are ignored and dismissed as
insignificant by the outside world. Financial and political isolation
begins to take its toll. This becomes a period in which anything
positive about Lavalas appears to be censored while anything
that damages the credibility of the Haitian government is magnified.
In this political climate, even former ‘leftist’ allies of Lavalas,
so-called Haitian human rights organizations and members of Haiti’s
press, justify accepting tours to the United States – paid for
by the U.S. State Department. During these tours they are encouraged
to develop contacts with the alternative media and the United
States ‘Left’ as they preach the evils of Aristide and Lavalas
to a largely uninformed American audience.”

That audience remains woefully uninformed. The Haitian people
will have to teach them a lesson, once again.

Unsettling the mind – is a good thing

“The Color of Justice” in the United States
is white, as Ryan Paul Haygood, a lawyer with the NAACP Legal
Defense and Education
Fund, wrote for BC on September
30, 2004. For the rest of us, there exists a predatory system
of mass incarceration:

”In America’s inner cities…where the ‘war on
drugs’ is waged against low-income Black and Brown people, mass
incarceration rather than treatment and rehabilitation guides
police drug enforcement strategies. In fact, the criminal
justice system harbors a deeply held belief that, unlike many
white offenders, Black and Brown offenders are beyond rehabilitation.”

Our comrade and co-upsetter Dr. Edward Rhymes, a gifted educator,
tackled the quandary of integration vs. segregation in an illuminating October
7, 2004 piece. The problem is, as Dr. Rhymes points out,
the Jim Crow system was never really dismantled. In the phony
process that passed for desegregation, about half of Black teachers
lost their jobs, but in most districts no meaningful integration
took place:

”With the loss of black teachers and principals
who served as mirrors in which black students, by and large,
saw the ‘angels of their better nature’ reflected, a deficit
was created in terms of black academic achievement. Although
this deficit was by no means total in impact, it was significant.
As mentioned previously in this writing, the public school system
in the United States has an explicit racist, sexist and classist
history. With that in mind, is it not somewhat naïve for us to
believe that a system that has shown that sort of bias towards
people of color, would effectively teach our children without
a radical educational revolution?”

Dr. Marcellus Andrews, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation,
dared to emit the unspeakable: Would middle class Blacks break
with their poorer brethren? And what would be the consequences?

”What would become of poor black people who
were abandoned by their former middle class partners? They
would slip further into the shadows of American life, suffering
ever greater poverty, sickness and early death like their white,
brown and yellow counterparts. If they struck out at middle
class blacks in the usual way that poor people strike at society – through
crime – they would find themselves assailed by a rainbow coalition
of middle class folks insisting on ‘law and order.’ Indeed, one
can imagine a situation where the New Washington solution would
lead to ever more punitive approaches to crime and punishment
once the black middle class stopped tying the fate of the black
poor to the nation’s history of slavery and apartheid. Sympathy
would shrivel still more for the poor and social outcasts, with
no segment of the middle class coming to the defense of those
in society’s basement. The United States would become
an even meaner place than it is now.”

Dr. Andrews’ November
4, 2004 article, “No Exit in Black: Trapped by the Economy
and Politics,” opened a new portal on Black political discussion.

BC has many friends, from diverse disciplines.
Dr. Alvin Walker, a psychologist from Louisiana now based in
Manhattan, is an expert in the psychoses of the rich and powerful.
In the wake of the Republican victory last fall, Dr. Walker graced
our pages on November
18, 2004 with his compelling piece, “The 2004 Presidential
Election: Another Pyrrhic Victory for White Supremacy.”

”Do you really think that the God of Christianity as revealed
in the Bible is unconcerned about the environment, or war and
peace, and injustice and poverty? Does God want 45 million
Americans to be without healthcare and does God support the
racist exclusion of people of color and other out groups?

”So we see that the deeply ubiquitous ideology of Euro-American
supremacy trumps class interests and, in this instance, leads
to a tragic, dangerous, and irrational choice, the election
of an overtly racist, war criminal hell bent on destroying
the last tattered remnants of the social safety net and seems
intent on attempting to remake the world in accord with his
own destructive, anti-democratic, white supremacist vision: George
Walker Bush.”

BC believes that history
is the fountainhead of the present. One of our mentors is Dr.
Martin Kilson, the
first Black tenured professor at Harvard University, and an inspiration
to hundreds – maybe thousands – of Blacks seeking knowledge.
On December 16, 2004,
Dr. Kilson explained the corrupt and convoluted logic of the
peculiar brand of American white racism in his grand piece, “Notes
on the Democratic Defeat: Conservative Christian Atavism Ethos
or ‘Christians from Hell’”:

”…the rightwing use of the atavism ethos by
Christian fundamentalists through Republican party modalities
in the 2004 presidential election was a depressing development.
It was no doubt a valid revitalization in the eyes of rank-and-file
White Protestant and Catholic Christian fundamentalists, as measured
by the fact that White Protestants gave Bush some 70% and White
Catholics around 53% of their votes. But the American society-wide
consequences will be something very different indeed. The consequences
will be mainly anti-feminist, homophobic, anti-egalitarian in
wealth and social mobility patterns, and anti-Black.”

Black culture and politics are inseparable

Although a thoroughly political magazine, BC understands
that culture is also nurtured in politics, and that Black icons
must be remembered and revered by ourselves – since nobody else
will. Our favorite expatriate African American in Toronto, Canada,
Norman (Otis) Richmond, paid homage to the late, great Sam Cooke,
on December
23, 2004.

”Cooke was one of the first R&B artists
to take a stand for civil rights and Black power. He cancelled
performances rather than play to segregated audiences. He was
also one of the first artists to cut off his "process".
He did it years before Hank Ballard came out with the 1968 song, "How
You Gonna Get Respect (If You Haven't Cut Your Process Yet?)." He
knew both Martin Luther King Jr. and El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz
(Malcolm X). Cooke sang at King's Dexter Avenue Baptist Church
in Montgomery, Alabama in the 1950s when he was a member of the
Soul Stirrers. His relationships with Malcolm X and Muhammad
Ali were documented in the film Ali.”

Richmond’s article was titled, “Sam Cooke
Still Resonates.”

James Forman’s voice continues to resonate,
as well. The civil rights leader and visionary died early this
year, and was saluted
by our colleague David Swanson, on January
20, 2005, in an homage called, “Jim Forman and the Liberal
Labor Syndrome.”

”Jim Forman did not wait for the Democratic
Party to set an agenda. He gave us a model of aggressive
and militant action based on principles of equality, social justice,
and non-violence. Toward the late sixties he grew more
accepting of the idea of violent struggle, and in doing so I
believe he was horribly wrong. But what he showed us through
the early and mid sixties was aggressive non-violent organizing. He
organized, meaning he reached out to people, figured out what
they would fight for, inspired them to fight for it, coordinated
their work, found the resources to pay them for it, communicated
their work to the world, and bailed them out of jail. One
of the reasons Forman is not better known is that he actively
sought to avoid stardom, and one of the reasons he did so was
that he wanted to develop many leaders in a grassroots movement. Many
of those he mentored are still leaders today.”

BC is dedicated to the proposition that Black
people must not be required to reinvent the wheels of progress
every generation, for lack of memory. David Swanson is one of
those who keep our memories intact.

A major mind from the Greater Antilles

John Maxwell, the venerable and distinguished professor at the
University of the West Indies, in Kingston, and columnist for
the Jamaica Observer, is a special friend of BC.
He allows us to borrow his articles, and refresh our minds. We
were especially impressed with the wit and incisive analysis
of his February
10, 2005 piece, “The Silence of the Blonds.”

”When Hitler was busy turning Jews into handbags, lampshades
and black smoke, his reason was that the world needed to be
rid of them (and of blacks, homosexuals, Gypsies and others)
because they threatened the purity of the Aryan master
archetype. This archetype was a blue eyed, blond superman with
no resemblance to Hitler himself or to most of his main assassins.
They, I now realize, were a new species, Geopolitically Modified
Humans – GMH – Officially Blond. Looking at
them you wouldn’t know it. Some people even said that Hitler
himself “looked Jewish” – whatever that meant, obviously
missing his essential blondness which gave him the right to
talk nonsense and murder as many people as he wished.

”What I realized this week is that the Congo’s
Muzungo was not crazy, simply blond. And when this thought
occurred
to me it cleared up a host of misconceptions in my mind.

"I had been asking myself how could
Africans like Kofi Annan and Afro-Americans like Colin Powell
, Canadians like
Prime Minister Paul Martin, and Haitians like Gerard LaTortue
not understand the appalling wickedness which their policies
have created in Haiti? Or how did Tony Blair, George Bush and
Malcolm Fraser of Australia not understand the primeval wickedness
they had let loose in Iraq? The answer was simple.

"Like Adolph Hitler, they are GMH-Blonds
and are therefore exempted from normal human feelings, duties
and responsibilities.They
are expected to giggle helplessly when confronted with
murdered children and dismembered teenagers, with tortured
Arabs and raped Haitian women. Like the good Germans in Tom
Paxton’s 1960s song – ‘We didn’t know a thing.’”

What exquisite sarcasm! Our hats off to Prof. Maxwell, a jewel
of the Caribbean.

Our guy in Chicago is Paul Street, the vice
president for research at the Chicago Urban League, and a prodigious
writer and thinker.
Street points out the dangerous irony of high profile Black success
stories that are taken as proof, by many whites, that racial
equality is a reality in the United States. He calls this wishful
phenomenon “The Full-Blown Oprah Effect: Reflections on Color,
Class, and New Age Racism.” Street’s February
24, 2005 article states:

“For a considerable portion of whites in ‘post-Civil Rights’ America,
black-white integration and racial equality are more than just
accepted ideals. They are also, many believe, accomplished
realities, showing that we have overcome racial
disparity. According to a survey conducted by the Washington
Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Foundation, and Harvard University
in the spring of 2001, more than 4 in 10 white Americans believe
that blacks are ‘as well off as whites in terms of their jobs,
incomes, schools, and health care.’

”The 2000 US Census numbers that were being crunched as this
poll was taken did not support this belief. More than three and a half decades after the historic
victories of the black Civil Rights Movement, the census showed, equality
remained a highly elusive goal for African-Americans. In a
society that possesses the highest poverty rate and the largest
gaps between rich and poor in the industrialized world, blacks
are considerably poorer than whites and other racial and ethnic
groups.”

In a society that tends less and less to document facts, but
to obscure them with electronic rhetoric based on racist assumptions,
we need folks like Paul Street.

Going into labor

BC dived into the Great American Labor Debate
with all four feet. We got strategic assistance and trenchant
analysis from Dwight
Kirk, a Washington, DC-based activist, writer, consultant,
and intellect. On February 24, 2005, Kirk posed the question, “Can
Labor Go Beyond Diversity Lite?”

”55 percent (or 168,000) of the union jobs
lost in 2004 were held by black workers, even though they
represented only 13
percent of total union membership.

”More stunningly, African American women accounted for 70
percent of the union jobs lost by women in 2004. Yes, 100,000
black union women – many the sole or primary breadwinner in
their households – lost their paychecks, their job security,
medical insurance for their families and their retirement nest
eggs in just one year. Gone!

”Compounding the disproportionate loss of union jobs in black
households – especially those headed by women – are the shrinking
paychecks of black union members. In 2004, federal income data
ranked African American union workers last among all the major
worker groups in median weekly earnings….

”The AFL-CIO’s cosmetic embrace of diversity may have sensitized
to some extent, but it hardly uprooted, the white male power
structure that has shaped the federation’s internal culture
and dictated its policies since the merger of the AF of L and
the CIO 50 years ago. In fact, many black labor leaders and
union staff workers quietly chafe in the yoke of ‘official’ diversity,
which merely colorizes labor solidarity within a non-inclusive
framework of power relations. Or to give it a brand name, call
it ‘Diversity Lite: more color, less flava.’”

That’s tellin’ it, brother.

Troy Peters, also based in DC, as a Senior
Fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future, warns that the GOP’s attempt to bribe and
subvert Black preachers and their congregations is abetted by
white Democrats’ arrogance and ignorance. Peters’ March
24, 2005 article was titled, “Beware Republicans Bearing
Gifts.”

”So far the Democrats have dismissed the ham-handed
appeals to black churches and references to Fredrick Douglass,
the Republican, as sloppy and ultimately futile. This assessment
may be correct, but the Democrats have excelled at taking the
black vote for granted in recent decades. Conversely, the
Republican machine has demonstrated a remarkable effectiveness
at doggedly refining their message until it strikes a chord. They
can read the demographic writing on the wall and they know to
continue as the ‘white sanctuary’ may soon leave them out of
power. And there are real weaknesses within the black community
for them to exploit.”

Our contributors are deep thinkers, and active movers and shakers.
Prominent among them is Rev. Reynard Blake, Jr., of Michigan.
On April
7, 2005, in the farcical wake of the congressional crusade
to preserve the life-support of a white woman in a persistent
vegetative state, Rev. Blake put forward “The Riddle for Black
Conservatives: What Would Happen If Terri Was Toya?”

”If Terri Schiavo was a black woman named Toya Brown would
she receive the same concern from white conservatives or members
of the 'pro-life' movement? For black conservatives and
government grant-hungry black religious leaders concerned with
gay marriage and school vouchers the answer would be “yes.” Fortunately,
those of us that live reality-based lives know that this is
far from the case….

”Bush and his fellow 'Compassionate Conservatives'
would do to well to realize that if they were truly 'pro-life'
they
would be concerned about the totality of life for all people,
from birth to death. This means that they would be about
the business of creating more jobs. Tax breaks for the wealthy
are not a solution.”

Such irony is lost on the racist Right. But not on readers of
The Black Commentator.

No excuses for racist behavior

Tim Wise is…well, he’s a wise man, and one of the nation’s most
effective white anti-racism activists. We’re proud to be co-collaborators
with him. Mr. Wise submitted a multi-part examination of “How
the Right Rationalizes Racial Inequality in America,” Part
One of which appeared in our May 5, 2005 issue.

”While some of the conservatives who regale me with their
rationalizations for racial inequality manage to quote a gaggle
of right wing ‘experts’ to help make their case, the claims
they forward are hardly the stronger for it.

”For example, the argument that racial
wage gaps merely reflect different levels of experience and
qualifications between whites
and blacks is simply untenable, when one examines the data.

”Fact is, earnings gaps persist at all
levels of education. According to Census data, whites with
high school diplomas,
college degrees or Master's Degrees all earn approximately
twenty percent more than their black counterparts. Even more
striking, whites with professional degrees (such as medicine
or law) earn, on average, thirty-one percent more than similar
blacks and fifty-two percent more than similar Latinos.

”Even when levels of work experience are
the same between blacks and whites, the racial wage gap remains
between 10-20
percent."

Tim Wise has a brilliance for shredding racist
presumptions and effrontery. We’re glad he’s part of our team,
and we, part of his.

Tamara K. Nopper, of Philadelphia, is an extraordinary intellect.
Although BC does not usually feature book reviews,
we made an exception in Ms. Nopper’s case. Tamara brought to
our attention a new book by Prof. George Yancey, whose studies
show that Blacks may become even more politically isolated in
this century. Nopper’s May
12, 2005 review was called, “The Browning and Yellowing of
Whiteness.”

”[The] author suggests that European phenotype or ancestry
will no longer be prerequisites for becoming white. While
the US Census Bureau treats Latino/as as an ‘ethnic group’ of
sorts by emphasizing Latin American origin, many are socially
read as “brown.” Most Asian Americans are markedly non-European
in phenotype and ancestry. Nevertheless, Yancey argues that
while they may experience patterns of discrimination and racism
from whites, both Latino/as and Asian Americans are following
the same pattern of assimilation as Europeans did before them.

”Grounding his study within the framework of noted sociologist
Milton Gordon, whose work on assimilation emphasized social
acceptance by the majority and identification with it from
the minority, Yancey provides compelling evidence indicating
that Latino/as and Asian Americans are well on their way to
becoming white. In the chapter ‘They are Okay – Just
Keep Them Away from Me,’ the author analyzes survey data on
racial groups’ social attitudes regarding who they approve
as potential neighbors as well as marriage partners for their
children.

”Contrary to the popular image of blacks as
racially restrictive, Yancey discovers that black respondents
are the most open to all other races. Yet despite being
the most receptive to other groups, blacks in general are rejected
by all non-black groups – whites, Latino/as and Asian Americans. While
some assume that whites will be closed off to anyone not white,
Yancey’s research show that white respondents are more accepting
of Latino/as and Asian Americans than they are of blacks. In
turn, Latino/a and Asian American respondents are fairly receptive
to one another as well as whites. Overall, Yancey’s findings
reveal that whites, Latino/as and Asian Americans do not tend
to reject one another as possible neighbors or their kids’ spouses,
but all three groups show a general resistance to blacks in these
social roles.”

Prof. Yancey concludes that “black respondents were the only
group to demonstrate a ‘distinct’ worldview.”

That’s why we need The Black Commentator.
If we must be alone, at least we should make sense.

History and memory

From New York City, Prof. Jonathan Scott has been tilling old
ground and building up new earthworks to serve the BC readership.
His May
19, 2005 article was titled with a hip hop flavor – “Punks
Jump Up to Get Beat Down” – but the thrust was intellectually
earnest. White supremacy, says Scott, insulates white Americans
from competition with other peoples, at home and abroad. The
result is mediocrity: the stagnation of a nation.

”By fighting against desegregation and the civil rights agenda,
white workers have been working hard for their own pungent
mediocrity and bland homogeneity. People talk about “the politics
of fear,” but the real fear is not Muslim terrorists. The real
fear is an old fear, the mother of all U.S. fears: that whites
will one day have to compete against equal or in many cases
superior opponents, namely black folks, who have been competing
intensely and without protection for the past 300 years against
everyone in the entire world. Just take Tiger Woods: what nationality
hasn’t he defeated already? Who will be next?

“…we need to remind white American radicals that they wouldn’t
exist today had it not been for African American writers. Do
they imagine they can avoid falling into the pit of U.S. mediocrity
without studying systematically the work of black intellectuals?
We’ll find out soon enough, for the race to the bottom is reaching
the finish line."

Our publication believes that mass Black
incarceration is the greatest crisis facing African Americans – a
systematically induced cancer on our people. BC has
documented the horrific growth in the American prison gulag,
that now holds
one of every four prisoners on the planet – half of them Black.
Randall G. Shelden, a Professor of Criminal Justice at the University
of Nevada at Las Vegas, buttressed our argument with a multi-part
series, “Slavery in the Third Millennium.” Here’s a slice from
Part One, June
9, 2005.

”As our standard history books have told us,
constantly reinforced during our public school education, the
slaves were ‘freed’ after the Civil War ended. Well, not
exactly. After the war the South was faced with some rather serious
economic, political, and social problems. Political and economic
recovery was among the first priorities because the economy of
the South, based as it was on a slave mode of production, was
being replaced by a capitalist mode of production. Another crucial
problem was what to do with the newly ‘freed’ slaves. What the
white ruling class commenced to do was to begin the systematic
oppression of blacks and maintain a system of caste rule
that would replace a system of slavery. What happened was that
the sharecropping system replaced slavery as a ‘legal’ method
of controlling the labor of African-Americans. A system
of agricultural (and eventually industrial) ‘peonage’ emerged
and was supported by such informal methods as vigilantism, intimidation,
Jim Crow laws and the like. What became known as convict
leasing was a prime example.”

The Harold Ford minstrel show

Harold Ford, Jr. is the prime example of
the non-representative Black U.S. Representative on Capitol
Hill. He was elected by
one of the poorest districts in the nation – in Memphis – but
fraternizes with and seeks to speak for rich corporations. We
have pilloried Ford many times, but our colleage Charles Cinque
Fullwood, of Washington, via South Carolina, raked the rogue
over the coals in a scorching piece called, “Harold Ford, Social
Security, and Telling Lies.” If you didn’t read it on June
23, 2005 take time to do so now.

”Evidently, the insanity
of racism and its crippling affects have no respect for the
passage of time or
the birth of successor generations. You simply have to have your
mind right. Be you Choochie-Boy Robinson, Coota Bug McKnight,
or Congressman Harold Ford. Whether you are dressed in overalls
or Brooks Brothers, you simply have to have your mind right to
deal with both white people and Negroes talking backwards. And
it is clear that Harold Ford's mind ain't right. He might as
well be a smooth talking pimp selling his sister to the highest
bidder in a urine-stained alley.

”Make no mistake, African Americans need debate, new ideas, deep think, vigorous
discourse, a discussion of the merits, brainstorming (even a slow drizzle would
help) and a clean break from old tired-ass, sclerotic ideas and strategies that
simply won't work in a fundamentally new world.”

BC believes in the power
of ridicule. Mr. Fullwood’s
got the power.

Manifest mediocrity

White American Manifest Destiny and the concept
of American “exceptionalism” are
tightly entwined. Both are profoundly racist concepts, but there
is something “exceptional” about the United States: it is an
exceptionally violent society, that now spreads its sick culture
of violence, rooted in genocide and slavery, throughout the world.
We were honored that Dr. Ira M. Leonard, of Connecticut State
University, saw fit to outline and analyze the gruesome tale
in his series, “Violence is the Engine of U.S. History,” Part
One of which appeared on June
30, 2005.

”The reality, not taught in American schools and textbooks,
is that war – whether on a large or small scale – and domestic
violence have been ever-present features of American life and
culture from this country's earliest days almost 400 years
ago. Violence, in varying forms, according to the leading historian
of the subject, Richard Maxwell Brown, ‘has accompanied virtually
every stage and aspect of our national experience,’ and is ‘part
of our unacknowledged (underground) value structure.’ Indeed, ‘repeated
episodes of violence going far back into our colonial past,
have imprinted upon our citizens a propensity to violence.’

”Thus, America demonstrated a national predilection for war
and domestic violence long before the 9/11 attacks, but its
leaders and intellectuals through most of the last century
cultivated the national self-image, a myth, of America as a
moral, ‘peace-loving’ nation which the American population
seems unquestioningly to have embraced.”

Mexico, too, was born in a cauldron of genocide
and slavery – and
it shows. President Vincente Fox bared his “white” ass to the
world, twice, first with denigration of African American workers,
then with the issuing of a pickaninny stamp. We were fortunate
to be the recipients of an article from Dr. Abdul Karim Bangura,
of the School of International Service at American University,
Washington, DC, that put the Mexican racial situation in perspective.
Dr. Bangura’s cogent piece for July
7, 2005 was titled, “White Mexican Racism Rears Its Ugly
Head Again.”

”The Afrikan Mexican presence
has been relegated to an obscured slave past, cast aside in
the interest of a national
identity based on a mixture of indigenous and European cultural mestizaje – i.e.
the idea of the goodness of being classed as racially mixed.
However, in practice…this ideology of ‘racial democracy’ favors
the European presence; too often, the nation’s glorious indigenous
past is reduced to folklore and ceremonial showcasing. But the
handling of the Afrikan ‘third root,’ which is represented by
more than 200,000 Afrikan Mexicans, is even more dismissive.
Since they live as their neighbors do, carry out the same work,
eat the same foods, and make the same music, it is assumed that
Afrikan Mexicans have assimilated into ‘Mexican’ society. But…Afrikan
Mexicans are Mexican society, as the historical record
offers compelling evidence that Afrikans and their descendants
contributed enormously to the very formation of Mexican culture.”

Vincente Fox doesn’t want to hear that. But we’ll
keep shouting it.

Finally, we include an author who is dear to our hearts, because
she is a broadcaster, like the publishers of BC – who
can write! Lizz Brown, of St. Louis radio station WGNU, schools
the people every day. She has been kind to us, as well. On July
14, 2005 Ms. Brown informed our readers of the death of Dr. Yasser
Salihee, an Iraqi human rights worker and journalist who was
apparently murdered by death squads organized by the U.S. occupation
forces – a man who knew too much. We titled it, “Strange
Fruit in Iraq.”

”When battered and methodically
beaten dead bodies started showing up in Iraq, Dr Salihee started
reporting.
Dr Salihee wrote about bodies in the morgue with their hands
tied or handcuffed behind their backs. Bodies with their eyes
blindfolded appearing to have been tortured, whipped with cords
and subjected to electric shocks. Bodies beaten with blunt objects
and shot to death, often with a single bullet. Bodies found in
mass graves and bodies floating in rivers.

”Dr Salihee also reported that many of the members of the Wolf Brigade came from
Saddam Hussein’s Special Forces and Republican Guards. Indeed, these men were
decorated veterans of homicide, genocide and torture.”

Conclusion

We know that we have left some very deserving contributors out
of the mix, and we are sorry. But we promise to be around next
year in the same hot season, and to include all those who were
neglected in this roundup of articles.

The Black Commentator is grateful for the
attention of our many tens of thousands of readers. There can
be no organized movement,
without an informed conversation. We wish there were more journals
of this kind, so that we would have somebody to argue with; arguments
are necessary in these critical times. Such discourse should,
of course, lead to action – otherwise, what’s the point?

We have faith in our people, who have always
acted – although
not necessarily on time. That’s why we’re still here, collectively.
Have a good and productive August.